Meeting the Challenge of a Changing World

Abstract

In this concluding chapter the EU’s role-set in a changing world is considered. Offering a reconceptualisation of the EU as Pragmatic Polar Europe, it challenges perceptions of the EU as both a power in decline and a power with comparative advantage in a multipolar world. Instead it shows that the EU has responded pragmatically to meet the challenges of a changing world, broadening the scope of its role performance and modifying its role positioning to take into consideration the preferences and ‘red-lines’ of others. In this way the EU demonstrates a capacity to utilise all of its diplomatic, bargaining and negotiation tools in order to react and respond practically to the new geopolitical realities of an emerging multipolar world.